Saturday, July 7, 2012

Secret Avengers #28

Time to just admit it. I’m horribly confused. The story playing out in this comic has little to nothing to do with the one in Avengers starring the same characters. I’m usually pretty good and putting that aside. (“Sure, Wolverine just went straight from Mr. Sinister’s dungeon to Ultron’s lab. Why not?”) This time, I just don’t see how that works. It’s like Bendis and Rick Remender picked up the same plot point from a brainstorming meeting and wrote independent stories without consulting the editors. I mean, this is just weird!

In this chapter/universe, the space Avengers are concentrating on freeing the Kree from mind control. I feel like I missed a chapter or something, because this new mind-based villain came out of nowhere for me. Minister Marvel is an entertaining villain, but I really didn’t see his involvement coming (and it felt a bit unnecessary in the greater Phoenix plot).

I do like that Remender has Ms. Marvel utilize her Binary power-set. It’s just another piece of evidence that Remender and I grew up on the same comics and like the same things. Binary was always one of the cooler Starjammers. (Admittedly, not a lot of competition in the Starjammers.)

Renato Guedes’ art isn’t typical for the Avengers. His soft pencil lines combined with the faded coloring makes this look a lot more arty than we usually get from our super-comics. It actually does work. I’ll admit characters like Valkyrie, Thor, and Beast look better than War Machine or Captain Britain. He seems to have a better grip on flowing hair and exposed faces than on metal or masks.